Jewellery designer Rosie Kent and boyfriend Christopher Nelson
(Picture: Handout)Rosie Kent has rarely felt as lonely and isolated as she did during the first pandemic lockdown, despite living in the centre of a global capital city.
Sequestered in her flat her only freedom was a daily walk around Canary Wharf. “It was such a soulless place to be,” said Rosie. “My boyfriend was still working, and I would go for a walk on my own. Nobody would even catch my eye. I felt so miserable and alone.”
Rosie, 36, and her boyfriend Christopher Nelson (who everyone calls Nelson), 39, were both brought up in the country and both love being outdoors, mountain biking and hiking.
So the thought of getting out of London had always been on their long term agenda. The pandemic sped up their plans and they gave notice on their £1,400pcm live work space in Westferry, just north of Canary Wharf, hired a van, and headed north to Chris’s parents’ home in the village Romiley, near Stockport, in June 2020.
“We just thought we might as well see if we could manage living outside a city,” said Rosie.
They quickly found they could — and since property prices are so much lower in the north west than they are in London they also realised that, if their families chipped in for a deposit, they could actually buy a property rather than carry on renting.
They began house hunting, and in December picked up the keys to a two-bedroom stone cottage in the village of New Mills, in the Peak District National Park, close to where Rosie was brought up. Thanks to savings plus family help they were able to put down a deposit of around ten per cent on the house.
Their monthly mortgage payments are now significantly lower than their former rent, although Rosie, a jewellery designer (www.rosiekent.com), does now need to rent a studio to work from. Nelson, a bike mechanic, has found a new job in a cycle shop.
The couple now have 555 square miles of countryside on the doorstep, and Rosie is finding making new friends much easier than she had feared.
“I am lucky because I have my own business, and I have met people through Instagram after I moved up here,” she said. “I also did a couple of pop ups, more to make friends and meet other small business owners than anything else. It is not fast, and obviously I need to do more, but I am finding a lot of ex-Londoners like us up here and that gives us something in common straight away. It seems to be happening organically.”
